Try a Little Harder
by Skye Maxwell
Summary: Hannah and Sam are having a sleepover, and Josh sees it as the perfect opportunity to have some fun at their expense. Pre-canon.


**Try a Little Harder**

Josh watches through the crack between Hannah's closet doors as Hannah and Sam return to the room, arms full with milk and cookies.

Josh almost scoffs.

 _How stereotypical. Two teenage girls having a sleepover with milk and cookies._ _What are they gonna do next? Put on a chick flick and start talking about boys?_

The two girls sit on the floor in front of Hannah's bed and rip into the cookies. Hannah turns on the television, but she leaves the volume on low, leaving Josh to wonder if it really is a chick flick.

He has decided to wait a while before he jumps out at them. He figures the best scares happen under a false sense of security.

He has always loved pulling pranks on his sisters, but now he has both an old victim and a new victim in his sights, and the prospect is nothing short of delicious.

He doesn't know how Sam will react, but that's half of the fun.

"Some of the cookies are a little burnt," Hannah says apologetically, holding up a cookie with a blackened bottom.

"A little?" Sam teases.

"Okay, more than a little. Poor Mom always manages to burn something."

"I don't mind. At least your mom tries."

Josh briefly wonders what Sam's mom is like.

Then Sam says, "Hey, thanks again for letting me come over. I really thought my mom was about to rip my dad a new one."

"You know you can call me any time you need to escape your house. I didn't have any plans tonight, anyways. Beth is out with Jessica, and who knows what Josh is doing?"

Josh chuckles quietly to himself at the irony.

Sam freezes for a moment. Josh fears he has been detected, but he relaxes when she casually picks up her glass to take a sip of milk.

 _Close call_ , he thinks. _Shut your freaking pie hole, Josh._

"Why didn't you go out with Beth and Jessica?"

Hannah shrugs. "Wasn't invited."

Sam looks intently at her and frowns.

"I mean, it's not a big deal, I guess. Beth seems to like Jessica. I'm fine with them being friends, but for some reason I just don't see the same thing happening for me and Jessica."

Sam just makes a little humming noise and nods, not stating an opinion either way.

 _Oh Sammy, I know you don't like Jessica. You just won't say it. I personally think Jessica is hot, but she's not my type. I couldn't be with anyone who is almost as annoying as me, but she at least deserves some sort of award for being close to my level of obnoxious without even trying._

"Hey… do you like Beth's new haircut?"

"Sure," Sam replies. "I think it suits her personality."

"I think it does too, but at the same time, I feel like she's trying to not look like me."

Sam raises an eyebrow, looking amused. "You're identical twins; it would be kind of hard for her to not look like you."

"You know what I mean, Sam. We used to do everything together, we had all the same friends, and we even shared all of our clothes. For a while I've felt like she's pulling away from me, and now I think she's deliberately trying to look less like me."

Josh had no idea Hannah felt that way.

"What? I don't think she's trying to look less like you… I think she's just trying to look more like herself."

Josh shakes his head and smirks.

 _Always so positive, you are._

"Maybe."

"Can I tell you a secret?" Sam asks suddenly, already leaning toward Hannah.

"Yeah, you can tell me anything."

Sam whispers something in Hannah's ear, and Josh's heart starts to race.

This is the _perfect_ time to jump out and scare them.

He tenses up, ready to spring forward, but then Sam is already done telling her secret and says, "I'm going to change into my pajamas now, okay?"

Josh curses under his breath. Adrenaline has already started to course through him, and he doesn't want to wait until Sam returns from changing to execute his prank.

"Okay, you can change in here. I'm gonna go to the bathroom," Hannah says, quickly getting up before he can do anything and leaving the room.

Josh bites his knuckle, wondering if he should go ahead and jump out before Sam starts changing, but after a moment of hesitation, he crouches back down, very slowly releasing a held breath.

Sam walks over to the bed, where her backpack is sitting on top of Hannah's pillows. Her back is to Josh, and she pulls out her pajamas, carefully laying them out on the bed.

As her hands move to the hem of her sweater, Josh's eyes widen. He rocks back and forth with indecision.

 _Should I jump out now? Or should I just wait until she's changed? But then she'll know I watched her change, but then I could just claim to have closed my eyes while she changed, or I could actually, you know, close my eyes…_

He still hasn't decided by the time Sam has pulled up her sweater and he can just see the bottom edge of her bra…

The doors of the closet burst open, and Hannah lets out an unearthly scream right in his face. He screams too, tumbling forward out of the closet and then scurrying away on all fours like a wounded animal.

"What the hell, Hannah?!" he yells when he sees her doubled over with laughter.

"What the hell, _Josh_?" Sam yells back, not looking nearly as amused. "What were you doing in Hannah's closet?"

He looks wildly from Sam to Hannah and tries to stand up so he's not in such a vulnerable position. Sam helps him by grabbing a fistful of his shirt and pulling him up to face her.

"The _look_ on your face!" Hannah cries, still laughing and wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

Josh, still confused, mumbles out a few incoherent words, something about _jumping_ _out_ and _just a prank_ …

Sam shakes her head and says, "Shut up, Joshua," and then she shoves a burnt-as-hell cookie in his mouth, nearly knocking his teeth in.

Josh curses around the cookie and then shoots a dirty look at Hannah.

 _Hey, sis, could you please stop laughing and help a brother out? Because your petite best friend is about to murder me._

"I knew you were in there."

Josh looks down at Sam questioningly.

"In Hannah's closet, I mean."

Josh feels like throwing up the burnt cookie and he hasn't even eaten it yet.

Sam smugly explains, "When we went downstairs, your bedroom door was closed, and the light was on. Now the door's open, and the light is off. You drag your feet when you walk, so you left sock tracks on the carpet in the hallway leading here. And when Hannah mentioned your name, I heard you in the closet, you freaking chucklehead."

Sam shoves him toward the wall, letting go of his shirt as if she was dropping a mic.

Josh sees Hannah biting back more laughter, and he gives her a halfhearted glare.

 _Laugh it up, Hannah! You're just earning more pranks for later._

Josh slowly removes the cookie from his mouth, the burnt taste lingering on his tongue as he starts to connect the dots in his mind.

 _So when Sam was whispering to Hannah, she was telling her to leave the room and then come back and scare me. What a punk!_

"Do you have anything to say for yourself, Josh?" Sam asks, putting her hands on her hips.

The gesture is way too cute for Josh to take seriously, and he realizes that now is the time to swiftly regain his cool.

"Thanks for the cookie," he starts, making Sam scowl. "I mean, things may not have gone the way I planned, but having a hot girl shove things in my mouth isn't a bad way to spend the night."

He gives her a full-blown, cheeky smile, and she gapes up at him.

"Oh, and thanks for that little show there, Sammy," he says, winking and knowing full well how creepy he looks doing it.

"Ugh, Josh!" Sam says, looking disgusted.

But then she grins evilly, and Josh suddenly feels unsafe again.

She picks up her glass of milk and dumps it over his head.

"Here, have a cold shower, sweetheart," she says, though she sounds less malicious and more amused as the milk flows down his face and onto his clothes.

His whole body twitches, and he slowly wipes the milk away from his eyes.

The slightly guilty smile on her face is infectious, and he quickly leans in to kiss her on the cheek, getting milk all over the side of her face.

" _Thanks,_ _sweetheart_ ," he whispers in her ear.

She shrinks away from him, a bit of the murder returning to her eyes. He takes that as his cue to duck out of there while his head is still attached to his body.

"You're such a perv," Hannah says as he hurries toward the door.

He shrugs and grins at her before leaving the room.

"Sorry about the mess, Hannah. I'll clean it up."

"Sam, don't be sorry; that was awesome!"

Josh, of course, doesn't stray far from Hannah's door, standing in the hall and listening to their conversation.

"That _scream_ was awesome. I thought he was gonna pee his pants. Actually, it kind of scared me too."

"Thanks. I don't really know where that came from…"

"I can't believe Josh, though."

Josh takes in a sharp breath. Sam sounds disappointed.

"I gave him every chance in the world to leave that closet before I started to take my sweater off, but he was going to just sit there and _watch_ me."

"Well, that was a genius plan you came up with on the fly. You turned his stupid prank around on him, plus I think we can safely say his crush on you is confirmed."

"Yeah, I'd say so!"

Josh feels oddly exposed and presses closer to the wall.

"I don't know what he's thinking. The thought of you two together is so weird."

Sam laughs. "Stranger things have happened."

Josh silently pumps a fist, taking it as a victory.

"Joshua!" Sam yells, and Josh almost falls over.

"Yes, Sammy?" he says as sweetly as he can manage, not moving from his hiding spot.

"You can stop eavesdropping on us now!"

"Oh, okay," he responds. "Thanks for letting me know!"

"Walk away!"

He sticks his hands in his pockets and walks toward his bedroom, a bit of swagger in his step.

"And Josh?"

"Yeah?"

"Next time you try to prank me, try a little harder."

It sounds like a challenge.

Josh smiles.

 _Challenge accepted, sweetheart._

* * *

A/N: I wrote this in honor of Thanksgiving because Josh says "thanks" so many times. But not really, I just made that up.

I think the situation with Beth changing up her look and kind of branching out is going to be my headcanon. On Beth's character menu, her relationship with Jessica is higher than some other characters for whatever reason, so that's why she's hanging out with Jess here.

Some more headcanon: Josh pranks Sam and Chris at the lodge (even though they weren't involved in the prank on his sisters) because he knows them best. It seems like it would be way easier and more fun to prank your closest friends, right? Then once you laughed it off together, you could team up and prank the crap out of your lower-level friends! (That last part is probably a bit of a stretch…) He just loves pranking Sammy, and if she's alone in a bathtub, why not?

I tried to add some creepy foreshadowing in there, so I hope you enjoyed that. ;)


End file.
